Tourism's contribution to the demand for London's lively arts

Abstract

How much of the attendance at London's lively arts comes from tourism? This question steers the inquiry, which involves model that distinguishes resident demand from tourist demand. Data for the empirical work are time series on individual arts companies, and accordingly the estimation method allows for autocorrelation and heteroscedasticity. Estimation indicates that, consonant with time-allocation logic, tourist demand depends importantly upon income whereas resident demand does not. It is shown that tourists, whose arts participation rate averages only 8%, account for 65% of attendance and that the elasticity measuring the attendance response to tourism equals 0.645. It must be concluded that if it were not for overseas visitors to London, it is doubtful whether West End theatres could remain open throughout the summer. Society of West End Theatre (1982, pp. 6–7)